As the European Central Bank (ECB) continues to wrestle with the decision of when and how quickly to wind down its quantitative easing (QE) program while inflation remains stubbornly below the 2 percent target and likely to stay well below 2 percent for the foreseeable future, it’s worth noting that there’s a new nightmare to add to the equation: The euro has surged in value this year, a move that not only depresses exports in recovery economies like Spain and Portugal but also depresses inflation. And one of the things holding down the value of the euro is the ECB’s QE program. So if the ECB tapers off the QE too early and quickly it’s going to make an overly-strong euro even stronger while dragging inflation even lower, potentially derailing fragile recoveries in the austerity-inflicted member states. And that means not sending the wrong signals is a key goal of the ECB is things are going to go smoothly. Guess whichsignals arebeing sent.

The title of the program derives from “the Himmler Kreis”–Himmler’s circle of friends, the industrialists who financed the day-to-day workings of the Nazi SS and, in turn, received slave labor from Himmler’s inventory of incarcerated workers. We borrow on the Third Reich term to characterize the Friends of Trump–the Trumpen Kreis.

Beginning with review of UK Independence Party leader Nigel Farage, we note the “Brexit” architect’s support for Donald Trump. In addition, we note that Farage has a German wife. Under other circumstances this would be unremarkable. In the context of covert operations/clandestine politics, a romantic/sexual partner/spouse might also be a case officer and/or paymaster.

We bring this up because the “Brexit” engineered by Farage and company removed a major obstacle to the creation of a German-dominated EU military force. ” . . . . With Britain, which had always adamantly opposed an integrated EU military policy, leaving the EU, Berlin sees an opportunity for reviving its efforts at restructuring the EU’s military and mobilizing as many member countries as possible for the EU’s future wars. . . .”

Interestingly, and perhaps significantly, Donald Trump has drawn support from Hindu nationalists of the Modi stripe. There is an important element of networking here: Trump campaign manager and “Alt-right” media figure Stephen K. Bannon is a supporter of Modi’s movement, as well as that of Nigel Farage. ” . . . . Mr. Trump may be largely indifferent to the reasons behind his Hindu loyalists’ fervor, but his most senior advisers are not. The campaign’s chief executive, Stephen K. Bannon, is a student of nationalist movements. Mr. Bannon is close to Nigel Farage, a central figure in Britain’s movement to leave the European Union, and he is an admirer of India’s prime minister, Narendra Modi, a Hindu nationalist Mr. Bannon has called ‘the Reagan of India.’ It may be pure coincidence that some of Mr. Trump’s words channel the nationalistic and, some argue, anti-Muslim sentiments that Mr. Modi stoked as he rose to power. But it is certainly not coincidental that many of Mr. Trump’s biggest Hindu supporters are also some of Mr. Modi’s most ardent backers. . . .”

Trump has also received the support of the mercurial, bombastic Russian fascist Vladimir Zhirinovsky, whose political career was launched with the assistance of Gerhard Frey, a prominent German Nazi. Trump and Zhirinovsky have overlapping political styles: ” . . . . His combative style, reminiscent of Trump’s, ensures him plenty of television air time and millions of votes in Russian elections, often from the kind of blue-collar workers who are the bedrock of the U.S. Republican candidate’s support. Zhirinovsky once proposed blocking off mostly Muslim southern Russia with a barbed wire fence, echoing Trump’s call for a wall along the U.S. border with Mexico. Zhirinovsky, who said he met Trump in New York in 2002, revels in his similarities with the American businessman – they are the same age, favor coarse, sometimes misogynistic language and boast about putting their own country first. . . .”

In FTR #921, we noted that Trump kept a book of Hitler’s speeches by his bed and read it to gain tips on the use of rhetoric. He appears to have borrowed a play from Der Fuhrer’s rhetorical playbook when addressing the Values Voters Summit: ” . . . He regaled the crowd of Christian voters in his usual bombastic way, but near the end of the speech, Trump seemed to play into the hands of his accusers who claim that not only does Trump remind people of infamous dictators like Italian fascist Benito Mussolini and German Nazi leader Adolf Hitler with his jingoism, blatant nativist nationalism, and over-the-top fact-twisting scapegoating, but he sounds like them as well. He paraphrased the infamous Nazi Party slogan, ‘Ein volk, ein reich, ein Fuhrer!’ . . . If one saw the speech, or watches it in replay, Trump begins raising his voice on the first use of the word ‘one,’emphasizing each part of the verbal triptych. Not only does he invoke the traditional lines from the Pledge of Allegiance, he progresses from, just as the Nazi Party slogan does, ‘one people’ (‘ein volk’) to ‘under one god’ (an implied unified Christian nation or ‘ein reich’) to ‘one flag’ (‘ein Fuhrer,’ the symbol of a unified nation). . . .”

Trump is also borrowing a rhetorical page from the Nazi playbook in his attacks on the press: ” . . . . On Saturday night, a new and foreign accusation came to the fore: ‘Lügenpresse!’ The term, which means ‘lying press’ in German, has a history dating back to the mid-1800s and was used by the Nazis to discredit the media. In recent years, it has been revived by German far-right anti-immigrant groups. And on Saturday, it made an appearance at a Trump rally in Cleveland, Ohio. . . Breitbart News [edited by Trump campaign manager Stephen K. Bannon] reported favorably on the term in an interview earlier this year with the leader of the German far-right group PEGIDA, writing, ‘It will come as no surprise to many that the mainstream media would lash out against a word that highlights their own, intentional failings. But [Lutz] Bachmann’s PEGIDA has popularized the term to the point where it has become a pillar — even a rallying cry — for the nationalist, populist movements across the continent.’ . . . Meanwhile, the hatred toward the press among the larger population of Trump supporters grows increasingly pronounced nearly every day. In these final weeks of the campaign, at nearly every rally, Trump riles up his audience against the press as reporters sit in the media pen, easy targets for vitriol. Reporters disembarking the press bus at Trump’s rally in Naples, Florida, on Sunday, the day after the ‘lügenpresse’ incident, were immediately greeted by boos and shouts of ‘Tell the truth!’ . . . ”

Concluding the broadcast, we note that David French, a conservative veteran of the Iraq war, has been viciously trolled by Trump’s Alt-Right followers because of his adoption of an Ethiopian orphan: ” . . . . In particular, the alt-right made a point to attack French’s youngest daughter, whom his family had adopted from Ethiopia. You see, alt-righters view bringing in children of color to America as the ultimate betrayal of the white race, which is why they had particular scorn for French. ‘I saw images of my daughter’s face in gas chambers, with a smiling Trump in a Nazi uniform preparing to press a button and kill her,’ he writes. ‘I saw her face photo-shopped into images of slaves. She was called a ‘niglet’ and a ‘dindu.’ The alt-right unleashed on my wife, Nancy, claiming that she had slept with black men while I was deployed to Iraq, and that I loved to watch while she had sex with ‘black bucks.’ People sent her pornographic images of black men having sex with white women, with someone photoshopped to look like me, watching. . . There is nothing at all rewarding, enjoyable, or satisfying about seeing man after man after man brag in graphic terms that he has slept with your wife. It’s unsettling to have a phone call interrupted, watch images of murder flicker across your screen, and read threatening e-mails. It’s sobering to take your teenage kids out to the farm to make sure they’re both proficient with handguns in case an intruder comes when they’re home alone.”

Program Highlights Include: Review of Trump’s links with the Steuben Society; review of the Steuben Society’s position in the Nazi underground in this country, before, during and after World War II; review of the political resume of Gerhard Frey; discussion of Blacks for Trump supporter “Michael the Black man” and his background in a murderous, anti-Semitic cult.

Continuing analysis of aspects of Donald Trump’s candidacy that have been eclipsed by his boorish attitude and behavior toward women, we note Trump’s use of thinly-veiled anti-Semitic rhetoric intimating that Hillary Clinton is in bed with an international Jewish cabal. ” . . . . The speech was hinged to the original purpose of his campaign: to trade on the resentments of a restive remnant of white America—angry white men and the women who love them—and set the stage for mayhem in the wake of his likely electoral defeat. This was not your standard, off-the-cuff Trump rant. This was a scripted speech, delivered with a teleprompter. It was crafted. It featured the key words of right-wing complaints: “sovereign,” “global bankers” and “slander.” Really, it came right out of a Nazi propaganda playbook. And when one considers the themes common between Nazi propaganda films and the films made by top Trump campaign staffers Stephen K. Bannon and David Bossie (as analyzed by AlterNet), we should hardly be surprised. . . . The agenda of the “media establishment,” Trump said, was to elect “crooked” Hillary Clinton, in the service of “special global interests rigging the system.” There are a lot of ways in the land of Wingnuttia to telegraph that your target is Jews, and these are two of them. Remember them: You’ll be hearing a lot in coming days about the “media establishment,” “global special interests,” oh, and “bankers.” . . . .”

Trump is also rhetorically invoking the prospect of turning to violence to right the wrongs of the “rigged” election he has bruited about. “ . . . . I watched his speech Thursday, and if I closed my eyes, I could smell the campfire smoke at the Malheur refuge and feel the Oregon winter wind on my face. Here were the conspiracies, the references to the shadowy international cabals, the whispers about the illegitimacy of the Department of Justice and the Trilateralist coopting of the FBI. It was like listening to an immodest Ammon Bundy. We have to protect ourselves from not just the government (because it is only a pawn) but from the people who really run it. We should be watchful, resilient, ready—and though he is reluctant, he will sacrifice himself, for he is the only one who can save us from the terror. Donald Trump shouted out every fevered dystopian fantasy I heard on the refuge . . . . I was outraged by Trump before. But now I am worried. . . . Thursday, Donald Trump traveled a step further down the path of militant right-wing revolution. It wasn’t a call to arms, exactly. But it was far past the point of comfort. . . .”

A major point of discussion concerns Trump’s deputy campaign manager, David Bossie. Even as Trump accuses Hillary of being a tool of the “elites,” Trump is utilizing Bossie, who is the head of Citizens United. It was a lawsuit by Bossie’s organization that opened the floodgates to virtually unlimited campaign funding by the ultra rich, when the Supreme Court ruled in favor of Citizens United. Bossie and Steven K. Bannon, Trump’s campaign manager, have utilized propaganda techniques pioneered by Hitler, Goebbels and company. ” . . . . The late Andrew Breitbart, founder of the website Bannon went on to lead, called Bannon the “Leni Riefenstahl of the Tea Party movement”—a reference to the infamous creator of Nazi propaganda films. While insisting to a Wall Street Journal reporter in 2011 that his work isn’t propaganda, Bannon went on to cite Riefenstahl among his main influences. . . . Ivana Trump, the candidate’s first wife, told Vanity Fair in 1990 that her husband kept a copy of Adolf Hitler’s My New Order, a collection of speeches that display the Nazi dictator’s exceptional ability to manipulate reality, in a cabinet near his bed. . . . . The Nazi regime produced a massive amount of propaganda; it had an entire Ministry of Public Enlightenment and Propaganda, headed by Joseph Goebbels. A central technique of Nazi propagandists, according to the U.S. Holocaust Memorial Museum, was to cast Jews as outsiders and dangerous enemies of the Reich, ‘‘subhuman’ creatures infiltrating Aryan society.’ . . . In her analysis of Riefenstahl’s ‘Triumph of the Will,’ Price noted that ‘perhaps most critically, Germany’s comeback is portrayed as well underway; the viewer need only jump aboard. What is being said implicitly is that there is no alternative.’ In ‘Battle for America,’ Bannon and Bossie follow the same formula, positing the Tea Party movement as the bandwagon to jump on. But the formula isn’t the only thing about the film that carries echoes of Goebbels: a researcher and counsel for the film was white nationalist Robert Vandervoort. . . .”

Program Highlights Include: The arrest of militia members in Kansas for plotting an attack on Somali refugees, scheduled for the day after Election Day; discussion of UK Independence Party leader Nigel Farage’s support for Trump; the support Trump has received from Russian fascist Vladimir Zhirinovsky; Zhirinovsky’s funding by German Nazi Gerhard Frey; Frey’s dissemination of the disinformation that Lee Harvey Oswald fired at General Edwin Walker; Frey’s close association with Reinhard Gehlen; Trump’s close relationship with the Steuben Society.

With Donald Trump’s sexual habits and speech dominating the headlines at the moment, we are seeing what Trump termed “locker room” banter eclipse far more important aspects of the Trump phenomenon. The GOP candidate continues to manifest Nazi-style beliefs, trumpeting the importance of heredity, breeding and genes to success, with his own German heritage having much to do with his own largesse. In that context, we note that his “genes,” in the form of Donald, Jr., may well be on the scene for some time.

Although Donald, Sr. would appear poised to lose the election in November, the Trumpenkampfverbande–the movement that has coalesced around him–is poised to continue, being (in our opinion) the transformation of the Underground Reich into a broad-based mass movement. Donald, Jr. appears to be a bird of the same political plumage as his father, with a penchant for racism and “Alt-right” tweeting. As one blogger put it: ” . . . And in the last couple of weeks Junior has let his alt-right freak flag fly. . . .” Junior also has political aspirations: ” . . . The oldest son of the Republican presidential nominee said that while he still has ‘a lot to do in my own career,’ he would seriously consider following in his father’s footsteps out of real estate and into political life. . . .” Donald, Jr. does not appear on the surface to share his father’s destructive sexual practices, and might become a standard-bearer for an Underground Reich in plain view for some time to come.

Another critical aspect of Trump’s political connections that has been overshadowed by the “locker room eclipse” concerns Trump’s profound, longstanding connections to Deutsche Bank, his go-to lender for his myriad real estate practices. Currently destabilizing equities markets around the world, Deutsche Bank holds the potential to collapse the global financial landscape. Having benefitted from a “rigged” ECB stress test, having benefitted from predatory lending practices during the sub-prime crisis, having benefitted from a Federal Reserve bailout following the collapse of 2008 and facing a potential $14 billion fine from the U.S. Department of Justice, Deutsche Bank holds 42 trillion euros worth of derivatives on its books, an amount 11 times the economy of Germany! Trump’s being in hoc to Deutsche Bank for upwards of $100 million raises interesting questions about his potential position as head of the U.S. government.

Another, related aspect of Trump’s candidacy concerns his threat to fire Federal Reserve head Janet Yellen and his advisers ranging from “Alt-right” ideologues to champions of a return to the gold standard–a move that would collapse the American and global economies. [This is against the background of the possibility that the Fed may have to extend another lifeline to Deutsche Bank to prevent another international financial meltdown] ” . . . In the first [group of Trump economic advisors] are Larry Kudlow and Judy Shelton, the intellectuals of the bunch, and both advocates of a return to the gold standard. While it has become popular among some Republicans in the past few years, returning to the gold standard is dismissed as a discredited, fringe idea by nearly all economists and market participants. And, for their part, gold-standard supporters typically reject the very idea of a Federal Reserve, so if Trump were to appoint Kudlow, Shelton, or another gold-standard supporter to the Fed, it would be the most radical and potentially damaging economic move since the dawn of our modern economic system, after the Great Depression. . . .”

Program Highlights Include: Review of “The Donald’s” affinity for the speeches of Adolf Hitler; review of Trump’s father’s possible membership in the Ku Klux Klan; Trump’s exhortations to his followers to disregard “the rigged” election and the possibility (probability?) that this will lead to “lone wolf,” leaderless resistance terrorism and murder; Donald Trump’s links to the Steuben Society.

Continuing our analysis of the Greek economic and political crisis, we begin with review of Greece and the late stages of World War II. The occupying British turned on the partisans who had played a large part in the defeat of Axis occupation forces, setting the stage for a brutal civil war. Much of the program centers on the fire-sale of major Greek infrastructure, including the takeover of 14 regional airports by a German corporation. Much of Greek infrastructure is now up for sale, including infrastructure that is essential for the reconstruction of the economy of Greece. Having figured significantly in the development of Greek debt, a number of German businessmen are now fugitives from Greek justice, seeking to avoid prosecution for corruption charges. After noting that Greek debt is actually LOWER than German debt when calculated using a standard accounting scale, the program notes the proposal to have Greek youth work for free, in order to relieve the massive youth unemployment plaguing that country. Recorded on Labor Day weekend of 2015, the program concludes with rumination concerning the past and future of slavery, scrutinized against the background of recent and future events.

Following Germany’s implementation of an austerity program on Greece that officially and as a matter of course negates Greek national sovereignty and democracy, we examine that agreement and the history that led up to it. Even relatively conservative American and European observers are labeling the development a “coup” against Greek democracy. We would call it a foreign occupation by Germany. The events in Europe can only be understood in terms of the execution of a consummately brilliant, cynical plan to implement German political and economic hegemony through a series of wars and what Von Clausewitz called “Post-wars.” The continuity of German political, military and economic policy through decades and across a challenging diversity of events is far-sighted and rigorous. Program Highlights Include: German Finance Minister Wolfgang Schauble’s use of Third Reich cross-border subversion specialist Theodor Veiter as a key adviser on European economic affairs; the explicit control of Greece’s economic affairs by “the institutions” [of Germany and the EU]; Schauble’s apparent goal of driving Greece out of the Eurozone; Germany’s successful evasion of its World War II debt; an overview of the evolution of Friedrich List’s blueprint for economic and political control of Europe and the world; review of the troika’s imposition of a 2011 Greek coalition government that included the fascist LAOS party; the fundamentally different approach of German corporations to cartel agreements from that of their international partners/competitors.